The present invention refers to a dynamometer for assessing the force exerted at hand level and to a related assessment method.
As it is known to those skilled in the art, kinesiology is the discipline that, combining notions of anatomy, physiology and mechanics, studies human and animal motion, with specific regard to the muscular contraction mechanisms underlying said motion.
A specific branch of kinesiology studies hands. In that specific field, a type of clinical test often used for diagnostic purposes is the assessing of the muscular contraction force of hands and/or of individual fingers, and in particular the detecting of the force levels and the possible variations thereof in one or more sample muscles, optionally in response to various types of stimulus or stress.
Notwithstanding the remarkable importance of this type of tests in the highlighting of eventual functional problems in patients, to date no adequate technical means is available for the carrying out thereof.
In fact, said tests are mostly carried out manually by health workers, in particular by physician or physiotherapist operators, requiring remarkable care, skill and sensitivity thereby. However, even in the presence of these capabilities, the test results are anyhow related to the operator's subjective perception, and as such often they are repeatable neither by different operators, nor by the same operator. Moreover, a test thus carried out is scarcely sensitive to minimal force variations which might instead yield useful diagnostic indications.
In light of the above, this type of test is not accepted by the scientific and academic community.
Moreover, assessment methods of the force exertable by human body are known, which employ a weight of known entity connected to a displacement system of the rope-and-pulley type, said weight being lifted by the patient with a rope-applied handgrip. Other methods instead obtain the muscular force by measuring the flexion of semirigid levers caused by the patient's action.
However, the technical means employed in these latter methods merely provide approximate and low-sensitivity force measurements, moreover being rather awkward to use.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,526,495 describes a grip testing device comprising a couple of gripping bars apt to be pressed together by an operator and connected to light bulbs in such a manner that the latter are illuminated as a consequence of the pressing action exerted onto the gripping bars.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,398,696 describes a grip dynamometer useful in an isometric exercise method for lowering resting blood pressure, which dynamometer comprises a hand grip assembly associated with an arrow display.